Hard-working teachers at a Tools for Teaching workshop

Dr. Jones sits down for an interview with Education World News Editor Diane Weaver Dunne.

Education World:  Is it ever too late to initiate a new classroom management strategy?

Jones:  No, it’s never too late.  I’ve conducted workshops in schools as late as February and early May.  Within two weeks, the teachers have doubled the time on task and have an average of 80 percent fewer disruptions.  Some are even able to reduce disruptions by 90 to 95 percent.

EW:  If you had only enough time in a seminar to share one remedy, what would that remedy be?

Jones:  There is no one thing.  It is unrealistic, and if one thing worked, everybody would probably do it.  People can’t blame children for fooling around.  Kids migrate to the least effective form of management.

EW:  In some urban and rural school districts, a majority of students are labeled “at risk.”  What remedies do you highlight for teachers in school districts that historically have more student behavior problems?

Jones:  First, stories of unmanageable kids (in poorer districts) are totally overrated.  If you were listening to monologues on this and that, it would be difficult for you to stay focused.  I went to a school where most of the kids went on to college, and we would have given that teacher (instructing through a monologue) a hard time.  I’ve visited schools (in poorer districts), and many teachers run pretty boring classes.

Students hate being bored, and they hate to sit passively.  They want to do something. (Some kids) haven’t been read to as much (as students from more affluent, educated households have), so urban teachers have to have a more kinetic approach to running a classroom.  They need to give students more breaks.  Children can’t sit for five hours!

EW:  What makes teachers’ jobs so tough?

Jones:  Almost everything has made the teachers’ job tougher.  Legislators have mandated Band-Aids for years and haven’t helped.  They don’t understand how complex it is.  For example, when they mandate so many minutes of instruction, they know only how to make it work on paper.

What happens when students have only three minutes to pass in the hallways between classes because of the mandates for instruction?  It’s impossible to walk from one class to another in that amount of time, so teachers blow off tardiness and then no one has hall passes.  If you mandate punishment for kids who swear, they’ll do it to get out of class.

Legislators are in fantasyland and offer no solutions on how to run schools.  Legislators have the notion that we can produce excellence in the classroom through testing.  There is no substitute for experience in the classroom.  That is the bottom line.

to read the full interview, go to http://www.educationworld.com/a_issue...